Hello, It has been a while

Hello again.

It has been a while since I posted here and for those who don't have time (or patience) to read through a long(ish) update I'll leave a tldr:

Went back to school; have no time; in a slump; novel not dead or abandoned; discord coming soon(TM)

In the last chapter of volume one, I said I was going to take a several month long break. I also said there would be world building fluff.  When I said that I expected the break to be no longer than 2 months, and that I'd be posting regular short world building tidbits.

3 and a half months have passed and nothing... I can attribute this to me deciding to go back to school (Uni) mid 2023 (which was also one of the main reasons for this break), and overestimating how much time I would have for side-projects like this novel.

Even then, it's not like I haven't written anything. In fact, I have written a total of 7 chapters for this story in the time!... which is not a lot for 3 and a half months considering I used to do 2 a week... And 6 those chapters are concepts for rewrites -- Some complete, others for published chapters -- But unrelated to volume 2...

So, effectively, I wrote a grand total of 1 chapter in 3 months... A chapter which is only 2k words long...

Yeah, I'm not fucking happy with myself. Even considering my time situation, I know this is not just writers block. I'm in a strait up slump when it comes to this novel, and, if I'm going to be honest, writing in general.

Now, before anyone reads that breakdown of what I've written and gets the idea I'm announcing a rewrite. No, that's not it either, at least not for now. I just like experimenting with different angles and trying to figure out what I could've done better.

What I'm announcing in reality is... nothing. Really, I just wanted to assure all of you that this novel isn't abandoned. That, while slowly, I'm building up the courage and finding time to continue  writing it in a way that I'm satisfied with.

This is a type of announcement a discord server would've made 100x easier (or completely unnecessary), without also blue balling people who have been 3 months for real chapter to drop. Yes, I've heard you. Yes, I'm figuring out how I'd make it work.

Please don't take this as me being dismissive of the idea; I just know how stupidly complicated moderating a public discord server is, and that I don't have time (or the sanity) to do it on my own.

To end, I feel bad leaving y'all with nothing while I sort myself out, and I've been experimenting with AI image generation again.

So, courtesy of StableUI and my own RTX 4070, here are some renditions of this novel's protagonist, Yuumi Matsunaga Katayama:

Sitting at the bleachers

As a magazine cover model

Some other neutral images.

I have a lot more images of other characters that I will be dropping along with world building chapters. I'm still getting used to these tools so expect the images to get better overtime.

That's all I wanted to say for now. Thank you for following this novel!